


Happy Middles

by oneatatime



Category: Murphy Brown (TV)
Genre: Gen, mentions of Murphy and the others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 08:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17076770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/pseuds/oneatatime
Summary: Princesses don't always need happy endings.





	Happy Middles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



Corky figured she’d be okay after her time at FYI ended. She’d survived two marriages, including one to Miles Silverberg (of all people!), and she’d survived looking after Murphy Brown for a week. Heck, she’d even survived Frank Fontana’s advice on romance and dating! Frank Fontana! 

She was a former Miss America and a good journalist. She could handle anything, right? She didn’t need the happy ending of a fairytale princess. Real princesses kept going. 

She got herself a job on an afternoon talk show as one of their roving reporters. ‘Afternoons with Dale and Grace,’ it was called, and, well, if Grace was twenty years younger than Dale and was only given about twenty percent of the lines, at least Dale treated them all respectfully. He wasn’t as good a patriarch as Jim Dial (who wasn’t perfect, but Corky wouldn’t hear a bad word said against him outside the FYI family), but who was, really? 

* * *

“And what about you, Ms Sherwood? Is this really what you wanna be doing?” 

“Me?” Corky responded, smiling at Shehana, the young woman in front of her. Shehana stood out beautifully with her long black hair and light blue sequined dress against the relentless pink of the walls. The lighting tech bustled around her, adjusting here and there. “Course it is, honey. I’m glad to be here. I’m proud of my roots.” 

Shehana’s eyes flicked to the crown of Corky’s hair, and Corky near spluttered on an indrawn breath. But she shifted in her tall black-upholstered stool, adjusting the fall of her scarf around her young, perfect throat so that it draped just so, and Corky saw the realisation hit her. 

“Ohhh, you mean you’re proud of being Miss America! Yeah, that’s great.” 

“It is,” Corky said decisively. She only had time in this interview for two minutes with Shehana, one of the few non-white Miss Louisianas to contest the Miss America title. The young woman was smart principled, and beautiful, and she had ambition, too. 

“Do you really want to be talking about it for the rest of your life, though?” 

From most people, it’d be tactless. From Murphy, it’d be blunt as hell. Corky continued smiling, because she was pretty sure that this young woman actually meant well, and was trying to be supportive of someone who was moving into her ‘golden years’. (Bleah. Horrible phrase. But it was nicer than calling herself old.) 

Corky nodded. She was going to be honest, though polite about it, of course. You need to give honesty to get honesty, need to give trust to get trust, and she didn’t want to just ask Shehana about her hair and nails on camera. “I don’t want to _only_ cover beauty pageants,” she agreed, flapping the non-microphone hand at her. “There’s more to life! But beauty pageants are awesome, and I don’t mind doing them now and then.” 

The interview went well. Corky wanted to showcase Shehana’s stunning dress, beautiful smile, her care for others, and her knowledge of advanced math. 

Of course, before she could get onto questions about the last subject, Dale back in the studio told her they were out of time. She smiled, and signed off. 

* * *

Corky kept going, because that was what she did. If you didn’t keep moving, you stopped. 

She did human interest stories. All of them, it seemed like, sometimes. The others, mostly guys, got the other work. She did cat of the week stories. She did friendly neighbour stories, and she did this random stranger in the park saved me from choking stories. 

She moved onto a harder news network, online. USATonight.com. She got some better stories this time, but the first time she happened across an issue with voter tampering the story was taken from her and given to a man in his twenties. She let it go. 

The next time. . . 

“I didn’t mention the time of the robbery,” Corky said pleasantly but sharply to the short man standing outside his garage. Curtis blanched. She’d been asking him about the customer service improvements to the local branch of the St Dennis bank, but he’d started rambling about things he shouldn’t’ve known about.

Corky, who not only talked, but listened when she was in staff meetings, knew very well. 

She probed further, and got what amounted to a full confession on camera. 

Curtis got ten to twelve years in jail. Corky got told that they couldn’t air the piece, and when the information went to the police, the news director’s name was on it.

She quit the next day. She wasn’t just Ms Relentlessly Cheerful. She had principles, and she had journalistic integrity, and she. . . 

Didn’t have a job.

She spent a few years doing this and that. Catching up with Murphy and the others now and then, which always led to interesting times. (Occasionally in jail.) 

Then she landed the morning show, and this was perfect for a while. Princesses don’t need happy endings. They just need good things, and they need to work for ‘em, right? Being Miss America required a certain amount of pretty and a certain amount of privilege, sure, but what it required beyond that was being smart and careful and good with people. 

The morning show was awesome. She was on equal terms with the male host, Joe, who was a giant pill sometimes, but she knows how to deal with pills. She knows Frank Fontana, after all. There could be worse. She smacked Joe with her papers now and then and told him to quiet down, and she smiled at him, and they got on well enough. She even helped him with his makeup when his makeup boy took a vacation and no one else could do his eyebrows right. Corky knows that everything starts with eyebrows.

Then the weather girl returned from vacation with double Ds, and Corky was out on her ear. 

No, she didn't need a happy ending. But she needed another happy middle, or at least something interesting to do. 

So when she got a text from the one and only Murphy Brown asking if she wanted to meet up after the protest march, or, more correctly, telling her to be at Phil’s after the protest march, Corky smiled. Doing things with Murphy and Frank had landed her in various trouble, including jail, and the time with the llamas and the runaway melon cart. But it’d always been interesting. 

She liked interesting. Princesses need interesting, as well as happy.

So she texted back, cheerful, wondering where it might take her, _see you there!_ And she added a smiling face emoji along with a heart, because she knew how much emojis got up Murphy's nose, and it was always good to show Murphy she could keep her on her toes.


End file.
